Closeup of a Melted Parkhomov Reactor

The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project has been adding many new photos on their Facebook page following Bob Greenyer’s recent visit to Moscow. This image of one of Alexander Parkhomov’s destroyed reactors in particular caught my attention. It comes with the caption:

“High resolution photo of Parkhomov reactor breach that showed anomalous heat . . . the attached image was described as producing good COP before failure. It is a nice one to study in detail. NOTE: Alumina has melted in this reactor meaning the temperature must have exceeded 2072ºC”

I think it’s important when examining this picture, however, to add this proviso which Bob Greenyer has added to the ‘To Russia With Love‘ live document which documents the Parkhomov experiments:

It turns out that the ‘Alumina’ tubes that Alexander is using are not 95% – 99.5% pure like the ones we had used from the likes of Coorstek, they are in fact only 50% pure – with the rest being made of silicates and he mentioned Mg [magnesium] also.

Using 50% pure alumina tubes might allow the silicate based plug to adhere to the wall of the reactor more easily for one thing, and with Mg present, there could also be some other chemistry going on that might result in the anomalous heat. One other thing to note is that the tubes themselves may be far less robust and might result in easier structural failure. In addition, with other elements present, it could be easier for Lithium and temperature to eat away at the tube resulting in pores that would leak H

This is very useful information which could give some important guidance to both replicators and students of this very interesting phenomenon.